The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (ISBN 0099450259) is a novel by Mark Haddon. The title is a quotation of a remark made by the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle's The Adventure of Silver Blaze.

The story is written as the first-person narrative of Christopher Boone, a teenage boy living in Swindon.

Main character

Christopher Boone, a fifteen-year-old boy, is the main character in the book. Christopher is either autistic or suffers from Asperger's syndrome (a condition related to autism), but this is never mentioned explicitly in the story; the reader is left to figure this out for themselves. Probably the most explicit reference to his abnormality is that he goes to a school for children with "special needs".

Plot

Christopher discovers the murdered body of his neighbour's dog, speared by a garden fork, and decides to investigate. He is severely limited, however, by his own fears and difficulties interpreting the world around him. Throughout all his adventures, Christopher writes a book about the happenings and his experiences, and the book he writes is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.

The story sees Christopher meet people he has never met before (even though they live on the same street as him) for the purposes of his investigation into the dog-murder. He eventually discovers that Mr Shears, who used to live opposite his home, had sex with his mother, whom he believes to be dead as his father explained to him that she died of a heart attack. He chronicles this and other discoveries in his book, and his father becomes rather angry at him when he discovers and reads the book. He hides the book and forbids Christopher to continue any investigation.

In the search for the hidden book, Christopher later discovers letters his mother sent to him that his father had hidden from him for years, and concludes that she is still alive and his father had lied to him. At this point, his father admits that he was the one who killed the dog. Christopher then starts fearing that his father may also try to kill him, and so, for the rest of the story, he embarks on a most adventurous journey to London, where his mother lives.

Other

Haddon weaves into the book several concepts from contemporary research and theory on autism; for instance, one incident described in the book is in fact a recreation of a famous experiment regarding theory of mind. The book also contains a few logic puzzles, such as a description of the famous Monty Hall problem, perhaps as an attempt to give the readers some insight into the mind of a compulsive mathematician.

External links

• A review of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
• An interview with author Mark Haddon